Orwell's list
Encyclopedia
Orwell's list, prepared in 1949 by the English author George Orwell
, shortly before he died, comprises names of notable writers and other individuals he considered to be unsuitable as possible writers for the Information Research Department
's anti-communist propaganda activities.
was a propaganda unit set up by the Labour
government in 1948 based at the United Kingdom
's Foreign Office, after the start of the Cold War
.
Celia Kirwan, who had just started working as Robert Conquest
's assistant at the IRD, visited Orwell at a sanatorium where he was receiving treatment for tuberculosis in March 1949. Orwell wrote down the names of individuals he considered sympathetic to communism and therefore unsuitable as writers for the Department, and enclosed it in a letter to Kirwan. The list became public in 2003.
Having previously worked for Cyril Connolly
's Horizon
magazine,
and briefly as an editorial assistant for Humphrey Slater
's Polemic
, Kirwan was Arthur Koestler
's sister-in-law and one of the four women to whom Orwell proposed after the death of his wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy
in 1945. Although Koestler had supported such a match, Kirwan turned him down.
, agents and sentimental sympathizers. The notebook, now at the Orwell Archive at University College London
, contains 135 names in all, including US writers and politicians. Ten names had been crossed out, either because the individual had died or because Orwell had decided that they were neither crypto-communists nor fellow-travellers. The people named were a mélange: "some famous, some obscure, some he knew personally and others he did not." Orwell commented in New Leader in 1947:
The notebook contained columns with names, comments and various markings. Typical comments were Stephen Spender
“Sentimental sympathiser... Tendency towards homosexuality”, Richard Crossman
“Too dishonest to be outright F. T.” and Kingsley Martin
"Decayed liberal. Very dishonest". Journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft
considered Orwell’s remarks "perceptive and sometimes even generous", going on to say that "DN Pritt is described as an 'almost certainly underground' Communist but also a "Good MP (i.e. locally). Very able and courageous'". Among the names, Orwell selected 38 which he forwarded to Kirwan.
Richard Rees discussed the names with Orwell, later commenting that it was "a sort of game we played - discussing who was a paid agent of what and estimating to what lengths of treachery our favourite bêtes noires
would be prepared to go." Orwell asked Rees to fetch the notebook from Jura in early 1949, thanking him in a letter of April 17.
One of Orwell's biographers, Bernard Crick
, thought there were 86 names in the list and that some of the names were written in the hand of Koestler, who also co-operated with the IRD in producing anti-Communist propaganda.
Orwell was an ex-colonial policeman in Burma and according to Garton Ash, he liked making lists: 'In a "London Letter
" to Partisan Review
in 1942 he wrote, "I think I could make out at least a preliminary list of the people who would go over" to the Nazi side if the Germans occupied England."'
People like Michael Foot
, the former leader of the Labour Party
and a friend of Orwell's in the 1930s and 1940s, were "amazed" by the revelation. Richard Gott
, who in 1994 had resigned as literary editor of The Guardian
after admitting that he had accepted travel expenses from the KGB
, in an unrelated case, referred to Orwell's list as only a "small surprise".
Norman Mackenzie noted "Tubercular people often could get very strange towards the end. I'm an Orwell man, I agreed with him on the Soviet Union, but he went partly ga-ga I think. He let his dislike of the New Statesman crowd, of what he saw as leftish, dilettante, sentimental socialists
who covered up for the Popular Front in Spain [after it became communist-controlled] get the better of him."
Bernard Crick justified Orwell wanting to help the post-war Labour Government. "He did it because he thought the Communist Party was a totalitarian menace," he said. "He wasn't denouncing these people as subversives. He was denouncing them as unsuitable for a counter-intelligence operation."
Professor Peter Davison, editor of Orwell's Complete Works, said the really disappointed people will be those who claimed to have been on the list but were not.
John Newsinger
considered it "a terrible mistake on his part, deriving in equal measure from his hostility to Stalinism and his illusions in the Labour government. What it certainly does not amount to, however, is an abandonment of the socialist cause or transformation into a footsoldier in the Cold War. Indeed, Orwell made clear on a number of occasions his opposition to any British McCarthyism, to any bans and proscriptions on Communist Party members (they certainly did not reciprocate this) and any notion of a preventive war. If he had lived long enough to realise what the IRD was actually about there can be no doubt that he would have broken with it".
Celia Kirwan insisted:
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, shortly before he died, comprises names of notable writers and other individuals he considered to be unsuitable as possible writers for the Information Research Department
Information Research Department
The Information Research Department, founded in 1948 by Christopher Mayhew MP, was a department of the British Foreign Office set up to counter Russian propaganda and infiltration, particularly amongst the western labour movement....
's anti-communist propaganda activities.
Background
The Information Research DepartmentInformation Research Department
The Information Research Department, founded in 1948 by Christopher Mayhew MP, was a department of the British Foreign Office set up to counter Russian propaganda and infiltration, particularly amongst the western labour movement....
was a propaganda unit set up by the Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
government in 1948 based at the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
's Foreign Office, after the start of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
.
Celia Kirwan, who had just started working as Robert Conquest
Robert Conquest
George Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
's assistant at the IRD, visited Orwell at a sanatorium where he was receiving treatment for tuberculosis in March 1949. Orwell wrote down the names of individuals he considered sympathetic to communism and therefore unsuitable as writers for the Department, and enclosed it in a letter to Kirwan. The list became public in 2003.
Having previously worked for Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
's Horizon
Horizon (magazine)
Horizon: A Review of Literature and Art was an influential literary magazine published in London, between 1940 and 1949. It was edited by Cyril Connolly who gave a platform to a wide range of distinguished and emerging writers....
magazine,
and briefly as an editorial assistant for Humphrey Slater
Humphrey Slater
Humphrey Richard "Hugh" Slater was a British author and painter.Brought up in South Africa, he attended the Slade School of Art in the mid-1920s, and exhibited an abstract painting at Lucy Wertheim's gallery, a leading London gallery....
's Polemic
Polemic (Magazine)
Polemic was a British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" published between 1945 and 1947, which aimed to be a general or non-specialist intellectual periodical....
, Kirwan was Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
's sister-in-law and one of the four women to whom Orwell proposed after the death of his wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy
Eileen O'Shaughnessy
Eileen Maud O'Shaughnessy was the first wife of British writer George Orwell.O'Shaughnessy was born in South Shields, County Durham, in the north-east of England, the only daughter of Marie O'Shaughnessy and Lawrence O'Shaughnessy, who was a customs collector...
in 1945. Although Koestler had supported such a match, Kirwan turned him down.
Notebook
Orwell based his list on a strictly private notebook he had maintained since the mid-1940s of possible "cryptos", "F.T." (his abbreviation for fellow travellers), outright members of the CPCommunist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
, agents and sentimental sympathizers. The notebook, now at the Orwell Archive at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
, contains 135 names in all, including US writers and politicians. Ten names had been crossed out, either because the individual had died or because Orwell had decided that they were neither crypto-communists nor fellow-travellers. The people named were a mélange: "some famous, some obscure, some he knew personally and others he did not." Orwell commented in New Leader in 1947:
The important thing to do with these people - and it is extremely difficult, since one has only inferential evidence - is to sort them out and determine which of them is honest and which is not. There is, for instance, a whole group of M. P.s in the British Parliament (PrittDenis Nowell PrittDenis Nowell Pritt , usually known as D.N. Pritt, was a British barrister and Labour Party politician. Born in Harlesden, Middlesex, he was educated at Winchester College and London University....
, ZilliacusKonni ZilliacusKonni Zilliacus was a left-wing Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom.-Life:Zilliacus was born on 13 September 1894 in Japan, where his parents, Finland-Swedish Konrad Viktor Zilliacus , a prominent activist for the independence of Finland from the Russian Empire, and American-born Lilian...
, etc.) who are commonly nicknamed 'the cryptos'. They have undoubtedly done a great deal of mischief, especially in confusing public opinion about the nature of the puppet regimes in Eastern Europe; but one ought not hurriedly to assume that they all hold the same opinions. Probably some of them are actuated by nothing worse than stupidity.
The notebook contained columns with names, comments and various markings. Typical comments were Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
“Sentimental sympathiser... Tendency towards homosexuality”, Richard Crossman
Richard Crossman
Richard Howard Stafford Crossman OBE was a British author and Labour Party politician who was a Cabinet Minister under Harold Wilson, and was the editor of the New Statesman. A prominent socialist intellectual, he became one of the Labour Party's leading Zionists and anti-communists...
“Too dishonest to be outright F. T.” and Kingsley Martin
Kingsley Martin
Basil Kingsley Martin was a British journalist who edited the left-leaning political magazine the New Statesman from 1930 to 1960....
"Decayed liberal. Very dishonest". Journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Geoffrey Albert Wheatcroft is a British journalist and writer.- Education :He was educated at University College School, London, and at New College Oxford, where he read Modern History.- Publishing and journalism :...
considered Orwell’s remarks "perceptive and sometimes even generous", going on to say that "DN Pritt is described as an 'almost certainly underground' Communist but also a "Good MP (i.e. locally). Very able and courageous'". Among the names, Orwell selected 38 which he forwarded to Kirwan.
Richard Rees discussed the names with Orwell, later commenting that it was "a sort of game we played - discussing who was a paid agent of what and estimating to what lengths of treachery our favourite bêtes noires
Bête noire
Bête noire may refer to:* Bête Noire , an album by British singer Bryan Ferry, released on Virgin Records in November 1987* Bête Noire , a comic anthology* La Bête Noire , a comic book...
would be prepared to go." Orwell asked Rees to fetch the notebook from Jura in early 1949, thanking him in a letter of April 17.
One of Orwell's biographers, Bernard Crick
Bernard Crick
Sir Bernard Rowland Crick was a British political theorist and democratic socialist whose views were often summarised as "politics is ethics done in public"...
, thought there were 86 names in the list and that some of the names were written in the hand of Koestler, who also co-operated with the IRD in producing anti-Communist propaganda.
Orwell was an ex-colonial policeman in Burma and according to Garton Ash, he liked making lists: 'In a "London Letter
London Letters
The "London Letters" were a series of fifteen articles written by George Orwell when invasion by Nazi Germany seemed imminent,and published in the American left-wing literary magazine Partisan Review...
" to Partisan Review
Partisan Review
Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...
in 1942 he wrote, "I think I could make out at least a preliminary list of the people who would go over" to the Nazi side if the Germans occupied England."'
Reactions to the IRD List
The British press had known about the list for some years before it was officially made public in 2003, and reactions included the following headline in the Daily Telegraph when "breaking" the story in 1998:- "Socialist Icon Who Became an Informer"
People like Michael Foot
Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...
, the former leader of the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
and a friend of Orwell's in the 1930s and 1940s, were "amazed" by the revelation. Richard Gott
Richard Gott
Richard Willoughby Gott is a British journalist and historian, who has written extensively on Latin America...
, who in 1994 had resigned as literary editor of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
after admitting that he had accepted travel expenses from the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
, in an unrelated case, referred to Orwell's list as only a "small surprise".
Norman Mackenzie noted "Tubercular people often could get very strange towards the end. I'm an Orwell man, I agreed with him on the Soviet Union, but he went partly ga-ga I think. He let his dislike of the New Statesman crowd, of what he saw as leftish, dilettante, sentimental socialists
who covered up for the Popular Front in Spain [after it became communist-controlled] get the better of him."
Bernard Crick justified Orwell wanting to help the post-war Labour Government. "He did it because he thought the Communist Party was a totalitarian menace," he said. "He wasn't denouncing these people as subversives. He was denouncing them as unsuitable for a counter-intelligence operation."
Professor Peter Davison, editor of Orwell's Complete Works, said the really disappointed people will be those who claimed to have been on the list but were not.
John Newsinger
John Newsinger
John Newsinger is a British professor of History at Bath Spa University.A book reviewer for the New Left Review he is also author of numerous books and articles, as well as studies of science fiction and of the cinema...
considered it "a terrible mistake on his part, deriving in equal measure from his hostility to Stalinism and his illusions in the Labour government. What it certainly does not amount to, however, is an abandonment of the socialist cause or transformation into a footsoldier in the Cold War. Indeed, Orwell made clear on a number of occasions his opposition to any British McCarthyism, to any bans and proscriptions on Communist Party members (they certainly did not reciprocate this) and any notion of a preventive war. If he had lived long enough to realise what the IRD was actually about there can be no doubt that he would have broken with it".
Celia Kirwan insisted:
I think George was quite right to do it. ... And, of course, everybody thinks that these people were going to be shot at dawn. The only thing that was going to happen to them was that they wouldn't be asked to write for the Information Research Department.
The List
Sources vary as to the actual number of names on the list (figures go from 35 to 38). Names on the list include the following:Writers and journalists
- J. B. PriestleyJ. B. PriestleyJohn Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...
, novelist and playwright - Kingsley MartinKingsley MartinBasil Kingsley Martin was a British journalist who edited the left-leaning political magazine the New Statesman from 1930 to 1960....
, editor of the New StatesmanNew StatesmanNew Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s.... - Alaric JacobAlaric JacobHarold Alaric Jacob was an English writer and journalist. He was Reuters correspondent in Washington in the 1930s, and a war correspondent during World War II in North Africa, Burma and Moscow.-Early life:...
Moscow Correspondent for the Daily ExpressDaily ExpressThe Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
during the Second World War - Iris MorleyIris MorleyIris Vivienne Morley was an English historian, writer and journalist.Morley was born at Carshalton, Surrey, the daughter of Colonel Lyddon Charteris Morley CBE and Gladys Vivienne Charteris Braddell. She married Ronald Gordon Coates of the Devonshire Regiment on 10 January 1929...
Moscow Correspondent for The ObserverThe ObserverThe Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
during the Second World War - E. H. Carr, historian
- Isaac DeutscherIsaac DeutscherIsaac Deutscher was a Polish-born Jewish Marxist writer, journalist and political activist who moved to the United Kingdom at the outbreak of World War II. He is best known as a biographer of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin and as a commentator on Soviet affairs...
, former Trotskyist writer, correspondent for The EconomistThe EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
and The ObserverThe ObserverThe Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
(1942 - 1947) - Walter DurantyWalter DurantyWalter Duranty was a Liverpool-born British journalist who served as the Moscow bureau chief of the New York Times from 1922 through 1936. Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for a set of stories written in 1931 on the Soviet Union...
, New York Times Moscow correspondent - Naomi MitchisonNaomi MitchisonNaomi May Margaret Mitchison, CBE was a Scottish novelist and poet. She was appointed CBE in 1981; she was also entitled to call herself Lady Mitchison, CBE since 5 October 1964 .- Childhood and family background :Naomi Margaret Haldane was...
, novelist - Norman Mackenzie, historian and a founding member of the SDPSocial Democratic Party (UK)The Social Democratic Party was a political party in the United Kingdom that was created on 26 March 1981 and existed until 1988. It was founded by four senior Labour Party 'moderates', dubbed the 'Gang of Four': Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams...
- Margaret Stewart, TribuneTribune (magazine)Tribune is a democratic socialist weekly, founded in 1937 published in London. It is independent but supports the Labour Party from the left...
industrial/labour correspondent - Randall SwinglerRandall SwinglerRandall Swingler MM was an English poet, writing extensively in the 1930s in the communist interest.His was a prosperous middle class Anglican family near Nottingham, with an industrial background in the Midlands. He was educated at Winchester College, and New College, Oxford...
- Peter Smollett, a Daily ExpressDaily ExpressThe Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
journalist later identified as a Soviet agent, Smolka recruited by Kim PhilbyKim PhilbyHarold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
. Smollett had headed the Russian section in Britain's wartime information ministry (MOI).
Academics and scientists
- Gordon Childe, archaeologist
- John MacmurrayJohn MacmurrayJohn Macmurray MC was a Scottish philosopher. His thought moved beyond the modern tradition begun by Descartes and continued in Britain by Locke, Berkeley and Hume. He made contributions in the fields of political science, religion, and philosophy of education in a long career of writing,...
, philosopher - Patrick Blackett, physicist
- J. G. Crowther, The Guardians first science correspondent
- A. J. P. TaylorA. J. P. TaylorAlan John Percivale Taylor, FBA was a British historian of the 20th century and renowned academic who became well known to millions through his popular television lectures.-Early life:...
, historian